Trauma is not as black and white as people think. I will fight to the death against being categorised or labelled, I am suffering from something. Whatever it is it's greyer than a British summer, there is no black and white.

The stigma of addiction is a pernicious and inhumane phenomenon. The continuing description of drug addicts as criminals rather than people who are unhealthy or sick prevents them getting well and consigns their family to years of misery and often destitution. Addicts should be treated and supported into recovery. Their entrapment in criminal justice is a waste of police time, a waste of the state's money and dissuades addicts from revealing themselves for treatment for fear of the criminal consequences.

I entered rehab being told that I had a 3% chance of surviving the addiction. I had to dig so deep inside myself to believe that I would not be a part of the other 97%. I began my journey to recovery 10 years ago.

Demonising drug users and manipulating research findings to sell papers serves only to avoid an open and honest debate on how to properly mitigate the harms of illicit drugs. If parts of the media continue down this sensationalist road, they will remain a malicious hindrance to real progress.

Up until the age of 40 (2002) I was a responsible gay man. I ensured that I used protection every time I had a casual sexual encounter. I was not in a committed relationship at that stage, so it was not even an option for me to bareback with someone. I found that exceptionally scary at the time, as I was aware of how easy it was to contract STDs, especially HIV.

I was eight years old when I accidentally walked in on my mum injecting heroin in the kitchen. I'll never forget the confused look on her face - the warm embrace of the opiates blunted any acute feelings shame and panic, leaving her with an ugly, dumbfounded grimace. Luckily, this episode was the turning point in both our lives...

The following morning, the day of Catalina's funeral, it was the turn of Bruce Lee - the self-styled "King of the Sewers". Never shy of a spectacle, he arrived barefoot with his head painted in Aurolac, a luminous helmet of bright silver paint that the addicts sniff. A stark reminder of the crazed drug-infested atmosphere where Catalina had died.

It seems like yesterday that the world woke to the shocking scenes of neglect and cruelty inside Romania's orphanages and care homes. Grainy Images of feces-stained wards, and babies chained to rusty cast-iron beds that seared in our minds. But 25 years on what has happened to Romania's abandoned children, and what fate awaits children from Romania's underfunded care system today?

At the moment the number of children who die or suffer serious harm as a result of taking adult's prescribed medication is thankfully small. But the likelihood of a child dying if they do take these drugs is very high.

Within 2 years I had gravitated to one of the hardest drugs known, crack cocaine, and nearly lost everything I had worked so very hard for including my family and long lasting friendships. In this time I also contracted HIV.

Escaping pain never works. You can try, but there will always be a time when you are left alone in the abyss of your thoughts and the pain will re-surface. Drugs, sex, alcohol.. they are perfect engines for your own escape, but eventually they will become your consistent means of running away from what is actually hurting you.

Anyone who thinks dying from an overdose is selfish has a weird idea of what an addict wants out of life. There comes a point at which drinking, drug use, all that - they're not fun anymore. Philip Seymour Hoffman wasn't out partying. He was alone in his bathroom, compelled. Cory Monteith in his hotel room. Chris Kelly in his living room.

We like brilliant men to be brilliant at all times and so we brush aside any indication that brilliant men might, like us ordinary men, be capable of brokenness, which means men like Hoffman and Heath Ledger before him, though richly brilliant, often end up dying the impoverished death of broken men who have been impossibly fractured by some intimate failure.

As a society we need a serious paradigm shift regarding how much we allow the government to interfere with our free choices as citizens. The vast majority of people using illegal drugs in the UK are not addicts, but are perfectly functional members of society who enjoy drugs recreationally...